Night of Peace
by zephyrXmeridian
Summary: We all know for a fact the leading man never dies, but after what happened to her now deceased husband, does Ashe really believe those words?


**Night of Peace **

_by Silvorfithrade_

It was a sleepy desert night. Silence fell over the sands like a hushed whisper as the moon rose higher and higher in the sky, illuminating the shimmering dunes with all of their sparkling splendor. Dalmasca slept soundly this night, without fear of impending war and enslavement. The burden of oppression had been placed on them for so long, some citizens still watched over their shoulders carefully as they walked the city's gleaming streets, as if to make certain the Imperials were no longer there. But the Imperials were gone, back to their own country to rebuild and repair the damages of their own. It was almost as though the entire war had been but a murky nightmare, solidified and tied to truth only by the thousands of new plots in the local graveyard and the ever-present, looming ruins of the once mighty sky fortress Bahamut that sat, broken and abandoned, in its own crater where it had been expertly crash-landed outside the city walls.

This night was a night of peace.

It was on this night that Queen Ashelia, freed from her duties by the coming of the night, stood alone in her private rooms, pacing the polished floors and whiling away the sleepless hours of her nights. She had told no one of the nightmares, those dark, recurring dreams that had plagued her since even before the war. The dreams of Rasler's death.

Rasler, prince and heir to the throne of the now-ruined Nabradia. Yes, she mused as she twisted her wedding band around a slender finger. The specter of her husband haunted her still, invading her would be peaceful dreams with brutal nightmares of his passing. His tortured face lay burned in her memory as she saw it again every night in her sleep.

"Rasler," she whispered as she fingered the ring gently. Yet, as she turned the accessory in her hands, it was not Rasler's face she thought of, but another. It was the face of a man she had traveled with for over three months, if it had even been that long. His parting words, too, still remained etched into her memory.

_Princess, I hope you remember my role in this little story. I'm the leading man._

She remembered that day vividly. Every detail of their escape from the Bahamut on the Strahl stood out in her mind like a series of well-placed photographs. She remembered the sudden, gripping numbness in her heart as she held the intercom mic, as they pulled away from the sky fortress leaving two of their number behind.

_You know what they say about the leading man._

Where are you now, she wondered as she put the ring back on her finger and wandered onto the balcony. Decorating the stone alcove were countless pots of plants that thrived in the arid Dalmascan climate; large, tropical flowers with sweet smelling petals that hung over the crystalline doors in artful bunches. Wherever the dashing sky pirate was, she hoped he was still alive.

_He never dies_.

The queen gasped as a hand gripped her bare shoulder from behind her. She whirled around, eyes blazing, and barely stifled a shout of surprise as she found herself staring into the face of the very person she had spent so much time thinking about. He had crept up on her so silently, it was almost as though he were a ghost or spirit, and yet she knew from the warmth of his hands and the sincerity of his quirky, roguish smile that he was very, very real.

He certainly hadn't changed much, she noted. His short, gentry-style haircut was as neat and pristine as always. Clean shaven and neatly dressed, several shiny, exquisite earrings dotted both ears, and around his neck hung three or four elaborate medallions, all of which she assumed were worth quite a lot of money. (It was also fairly safe to assume he hadn't paid a single piece of gil for them, she thought with a wry smile.) Both hands wore a ring or two, and on his vest was the familiar gold embroidery that marked him as Archadian noble and runaway sky pirate both.

His eyes sparkled with the smile that hung, faintly traced, on his lips. She looked into those eyes, frozen for a moment with fear, fear that this was only another dream, that she would wake up and find him dead and gone from her forever. "Hello, Princess," he whispered.

He kissed her.

The world around her came to a screeching halt as his lips met hers. All she could hear was the rush of blood pounding in her ears; her senses overwhelmed by the subtly spicy scent of his cologne and the gentle caress of his rough hands in her hair. Her mind protested feebly, shouting in her head that this was wrong, that what she was doing was about as far from _right_ as she could possibly get.

_I know this is wrong._

And yet, her heart disagreed. In her heart, this was truly, wholly right, and this was where she belonged.

Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca followed her heart.


End file.
